Better world: Give police your DNA

Whose DNA profiles should police be allowed to keep in their databases? The only fair and effective answer is everybody's.

DNA profiling is a powerful forensic technique. It has led to the conviction of many criminals who would otherwise have eluded justice, and the freeing of many innocent people who had been wrongly convicted.

Its success in solving crimes depends on finding a match to a DNA profile generated from tissue fragments left at a crime scene, so many countries have set up databases of their citizens' DNA profiles, and often retain the original samples too. The UK's database includes the profiles of 7.5 per cent of its population, the highest proportion in the world. Even so, a match can be found for only around half the usable tissue samples taken from crime scenes.

This is the case even though the UK database contains the profiles not only of convicted ...

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